Energy efficient heat treatment process design and optimisation

Currently ICT (Information and Communication Technology) solutions are being developed for energy saving in buildings and, to some extent, for the manufacturing domain as well. This paper describes an approach and ICT tool developed for manufacturing process energy efficiency design and optimization, in particular focused on the heat treatment process of steel casting parts. Traditionally this manufacturing process is designed based on experts experience selecting a predefined temperature-time curve provided customer specifications for the resulting steel parts. However this curve can actually be optimised in terms of energy consumption while keeping required mechanical properties. This improved design is what the tool here described provides, using knowledge based approach for process design and multivariate optimisation and simulation techniques for process optimisation.